Donald K. Barta, a survivor of World War II came back from the war on the Queen Mary. Barta is now 95 and he came from Portland, Oregon to spend a few days in Long Beach on board the Queen. Barta is holding a photo of himself sunbathing on the ship.
Long Beach April, 17, 2018. Photo by Brittany Murray, Press Telegram/SCNG

Don Barta’s eyes lit up as he walked aboard the Queen Mary last week for the first time since his last and only trip on the ship at the end of World War II almost 73 years ago.

Barta, 95, may have lost a step or two and his memory has dimmed some, but he still clearly remembers seeing the massive ship for the first time in 1945.

The Queen Mary looked different then. It had been converted into a military transport and had been painted gray to make it harder to spot by German ships, submarines and airplanes. It was nicknamed “The Gray Ghost” as it transported more than 750,000 servicemen and women during the war.

Barta remembers seeing the Queen Mary the first time: “I said, ‘Hallelujah!’ we’re going home,” he said while sitting on the Promenade Deck of the Queen near the Chelsea Chowder House and Bar and oversized photos of celebrity passengers: Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Laurel and Hardy, Liberace and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

There’s also a large photo of the Queen Mary, wearing its camouflage gray paint, while docked in New York Harbor in 1940 between the French SS Normandie and the RMS Queen Elizabeth, the three biggest ships in the world at the time.

On this trip, Barta was with Joan, his wife of 56 years. She said she had heard her husband talk about the Queen Mary over the years and decided it would be good for him to see the ship one more time. Accompanying them from their home in the Portland, Oregon area was Wayne Smith, a friend and retired minister.

Barta had brought along several photos of his trip aboard the Queen Mary. One showed him with his shirt off, arms locked behind his head and smiling broadly while sunbathing on the ship. He held up that photo last week while leaning on a ship’s railing with the city’s skyline in the background. He could have gone sunbathing again in the brilliant sun shining on the ship’s deck. Again, Barta smiled broadly, matching the smile in that photo of more than seven decades ago.

He also had photos of soldiers lying in bunks, standing by railings mingling with each other. He remembered “standing forever” waiting in food lines. Nothing changes in the Army.

Barta joined the Army in 1943 as a medic specializing in X-ray work. His unit, the 117th Medical Unit, was eventually deployed to a 1,000-bed hospital in Bristol, England. During the bombings in London, many badly burned British citizens were also treated at the hospital. X-ray technicians often worked around the clock.

They wore a badge-type device to monitor their level of radiation. One day Barta’s badge was black, indicating that he had been overexposed and probably would never have children, Smith said. Badge color notwithstanding, Barta was able to father two daughters.

The trauma of dealing with the wounded took a toll on the hospital staff. Barta told of X-raying a young soldier, who kept crying, saying, “Doc, don’t let them take my leg off.” Barta didn’t have the heart to tell the soldier that his leg had already been removed.

Barta said there was much jubilation when the war against Germany ended, but their joy was short-lived when they were told they would be assigned to the war in the Pacific theater which was continuing. Barta was at Camp Lee, Virginia, waiting to be shipped out to the South Pacific when Japan surrendered in August 1945 after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the country.

One of the doctors in Barta’s unit said he had an aptitude for medicine and encouraged him to come to Boston with him work with him after the war.

“But Don was homesick to go home to Portland and also felt he had seen enough broken bodies for a lifetime and decided to pursue another field,” Smith said.

For a short time, he worked in construction and ended up building his own home which he and his wife live in today. Barta thought he could teach young people about construction work so he became a teacher of vocational arts. At one point in his teaching career, he taught dependents of military men and women at bases overseas and was selected as the number one teacher in all of those schools. Returning to the United States, Barta became principal at Gardiner Junior High in Oregon City near Portland and served in that position for 32 years.

He married his wife, a teacher and artist, in 1961, and they still live in the “charming” two-bedroom he built in 1948.

Speaking for her husband, Joan said he was impressed with the “overwhelmingly great wood and glass craftsmanship” on the Queen Mary.

“I could see the deep appreciation in his eyes for the beautiful work done throughout the ship,” she said. Her husband nodded in agreement.

The Bartas and Smith spent three days on the Queen Mary, including a guided tour by Commodore Everette Hoard. Just by accident, Commodore Hoard was taking another couple on a tour when they bumped into the Bartas. The woman, Elaine Hayward, with her husband, Nigel, visiting from England, said her father was chief baker on the ship You never know who you might run into on the Queen Mary.

Reached in Portland after the Bartas returned home Friday, Smith said they both enjoyed the trip.

“Don said he was glad they went and was honored by the attention,” Smith said. “It was the least we could do for him. We owe him and so many others like him, members of the Greatest Generation, so much for all they did during that awful war.”

Rich Archbold is public editor of the Press-Telegram. Archbold, who arrived in Long Beach in 1978, was the longtime executive editor of the Press-Telegram and managing editor before that. He writes a weekly column and coordinates the Press-Telegram's myriad community connections.